She changed the tune again, to "Winter Winds," as another blast hit the shutters and rattled them. She told herself again that it could be worse. She could be on the road right now. She could be back in Westhaven. There were a hundred places she could be; instead she was here, with a certain amount of her keep assured.
Sapphire drifted down the stairs, dressed in a lovely, soft kirtle of her signature blue. That was a rarity, the ladies didn't usually come downstairs after dark. Rune was a little surprised; but then she saw why Sapphire had come down. While luxurious, the lady's rooms were meant for one thing only-besides sleep. And then, it got very crowded with more than two. If clients wanted simple company, and in a group rather than alone, well, the common room was the best place for that. There were four older gentlemen waiting eagerly for Sapphire at their table, a pentangle board set up and ready for play.
If all they wanted was to play pentangle with a beautiful woman who would tease and flatter all of them until they went home-or one or more of them mustered the juice to take advantage of the other services here-then Amber's would gladly provide that service. And now Rune knew why Carly was especially sour tonight. Bad enough that she wasn't good enough to take her place upstairs. Worse that one of the ladies came down here, into her sphere, to attract all eyes and remind her of the fact. For truly, there wasn't an eye in the place that wasn't fastened on Sapphire, and well she knew it. Though Carly was out-of-bounds, she liked having the men look at her; now no one would give her any more attention than the lantern on the table.
Sapphire winked broadly at Rune, who raised her eyebrows and played her a special little flourish as she sat down. Rune knew all the ladies now, and to her immense surprise, she found that she liked all of them. And never mind that one of them wasn't human. . . .
That was Topaz; a lady she had met only after Maddie had taken her aside and warned her not to show surprise if she could help it. What Topaz was, Rune had never had the temerity to ask. Another one of those creatures who, like Boony, came from-elsewhere. Only Topaz was nothing like Boony; she was thin and wiry and com-
pletely hairless, from her toe and finger-claws to the top of her head. Her golden eyes were set slantwise in her flat face, which could have been catlike; but she gave an impression less like a cat and far more like a lizard with her sinuosity and her curious stillness. Her skin was as gold as her eyes, a curious, metallic gold, and Rune often had the feeling that if she looked closely enough, she'd find that in place of skin Topaz really had a hide covered in tiny scales, the size of grains of dust. . . .
But whatever else she looked like, Topaz was close enough to human to be very popular at Amber's. Or else-
But Rune didn't want to speculate on that. She was still capable of being flustered by some of the things that went on here.
Her fingers wandered into "That Wild Ocean"-which made her think of Pearl, not because Pearl was wild, but because she reminded Rune of the way the melody twisted and twined in complicated figures, for all that it was a slow piece. Pearl was human, altogether human, though of a different race than anyone Rune had ever seen. She was tiny and very pale, with skin as colorless as white quartz, long black hair that fell unfettered right down to the floor, and black, obliquely slanted eyes. She and Topaz spent a great deal of their free time together; Rune suspected that there were more of Topaz's kind where Pearl came from, although neither of them had ever said anything to prove or disprove that. Occasionally Rune would catch them whispering together in what sounded like a language composed entirely of sibilants, but when Rune had asked Pearl if that was her native tongue, the tiny woman had shaken her head and responded with a string of liquid syllables utterly unlike the hissing she had shared with Topaz.
But for all their strangeness, Pearl and Topaz were very friendly, both to her and to Maddie, Shawm, and Arden. Maddie frankly adored Pearl, and would gladly run any errand the woman asked of her. Shawm, white-blond and bashful, with too-large hands and feet, was totally in awe of all the ladies, and couldn't even get a word out straight when they were around. Arden, tall and dark, like Rune, teased them all like a younger brother, and took great pleasure in being teased back. He was never at a loss for words with any of them-
Except for one; the fourth lady, Ruby, who was the perfect compliment to Sapphire. Her eyes were a bright, challenging green, in contrast to Sapphire's dreamy blue. Her hair was a brilliant red, cut shorter than Rune's. Her figure was athletic and muscular, and she kept it that way by running every morning when she rose, and following that by two hours of gymnastic exercises. Where Sapphire was soft and lush, she was muscle and whipcord. Where Sapphire was gentle, she was wild. Where Sapphire was languid, she was quicksilver; Sapphire's even temper was matched by her fiery changeability.
Predictably enough, they were best friends.
And where Arden could tease Sapphire until she collapsed in a fit of giggles, he became tongue-tied and silent in the presence of Ruby.
And Carly hated that.
Well, fortunately Ruby was fully occupied at the moment-so Arden could tease Sapphire as she teased the old gentlemen at her table, and Carly only glowered, she didn't fume.
All four of them, plus Maddie, were the first female friends Rune had ever had. She found herself smiling a little at that, and smiled a bit more when she realized that her fingers had started "Home, Home, Home." Well, this was the closest thing she'd ever had to a home. . . .
One by one, the four ladies had introduced themselves over the course of her first few weeks at Amber's, and gradually Rune had pieced together their stories. Topaz's history was the most straightforward. Topaz, like Boony, had been a bondling, and had been taken up for the same reason; failure to pay tax and tithe. She had been a small merchant-trader until that moment. Amber had bought her contract from one of the other houses at Pearl's hysterical insistence when the tiny creature learned that Topaz was in thrall there.
"And just as well," Topaz had said, once. "One more night there, and . . . something would have been dead. It might have been a client. It might have been me. I cannot say."
Looking at her strange, golden eyes, and the wildness lurking in them, Rune could believe it. It was not that Topaz had objected to performing what she called "concubine duties." Evidently that was a trade with no stigma attached in her (and Pearl's) country. It was some of the other things the house had demanded she perform. . . .
Her eyes had darkened and the pupils had widened until they were all that was to be seen when she'd said that. Rune had not asked any further questions.
Pearl had come as a concubine in the train of a foreign trader; when he had died, she had been left with nowhere to go. By the laws of her land, she was property-and should have been sent back with the rest of his belongings. But by the laws of Nolton, even a bondling was freed by the death of his bondholder, and no one was willing to part with the expense of transporting her home again.
But she had learned of Flower Street and of Amber's from her now-dead master, and had come looking for a place. Originally she had intended to stay only long enough to earn the money to return home, but she found that she liked it here, and so stayed on, amassing savings enough to one day retire to a place of her own, and devote herself to her other avocation, the painting of tiny pictures on eggshells. As curiosities, her work fetched good prices, and would be enough to supplement her savings.
Sapphire's story was the one she had obliquely referred to that first morning when Rune had met her; carried off and despoiled by a rich young merchant's son, she had been abandoned when her pregnancy first became apparent. She had been befriended by Tonno, who had found her fainting on his doorstep, and taken to Amber. What became of the child, Rune did not know, though she suspected that Amber had either rid the girl of it or she had miscarried naturally. Amber had seen the haggard remains of Sapphire's great beauty, and had set herself to bringing it back to full bloom again. And had succeeded. . . .
Then there was Ruby, who had been a wild child, willful, and determined to be everything her parents hated and feared. Possibly because they had been so determined that she become a good little daughter of the Church-perhaps even a cleric-Priest or a nun. She had run away from the convent, got herself deflowered by the first man she ran across (a minstrel, she had confided to Rune, "And I don't know who was the more amazed, him or me") and discovered that she not only had a talent for the games of man and maid, she craved the contact. So she had come to Nolton ("Working my way"), examined each of the brothels on Flower Street, then came straight to Amber, demanding a place upstairs.
Amber, much amused by her audacity and impressed by her looks, had agreed to a compromise-a week of trial, under the name "Garnet," promising her a promotion to "Ruby" and full house status if she did well.